a Bon Appetit – you’d rather not have?

Do you find yourself too hungry? Torn between eating and waiting a ‘sensible’ time until your next meal?

It could be your trouble is a lack of satiety, the regulatory system that lets you know when you’re full and reduces your drive to keep eating. (We’re not talking about your stomach being full-up; that’s an issue for another article.)

Some of the foods that we eat are calorie dense, for example, bread and other starchy foods which also have a low fibre content, especially if they have high sugar too. Yes, cake is a prime suspect. In fact, all foods with a high glycaemic index will leave you needing refuelling relatively quickly.

To combat this, we need to eat foods that take longer to digest, and by staying longer in our intestines turn-off the messages to our brain to hunt for food. Our body then produces “Leptin (from Greek λεπτός leptos, “thin”), the “satiety hormone”, a hormone made by adipose cells that helps to regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger. Leptin is opposed by the actions of the hormone ghrelin, the “hunger hormone”. Both hormones act on receptors in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus to regulate appetite to achieve energy homeostasis. In obesity, a decreased sensitivity to leptin occurs, resulting in an inability to detect satiety despite high energy stores.” (Wikipedia)

Starchy vegetables are great for this, and the water content also helps keep you feeling full for longer. Sweet potatoes and other tubers are ideal. One product found in starchy roots is Glucomannan which in short, is a water-soluble dietary fibre. Glucomannan is a sugar made from the root of the konjac plant (Amorphophallus konjac). Glucomannan powder, capsules, and tablets are used as medicine for constipation, weight loss in adults and children, type 2 diabetes, blood sugar control, and lowering cholesterol.
Like other soluble fibres, it is used to promote weight loss.

Glucomannan takes up space in the stomach and promotes a feeling of fullness, thereby reducing food intake at a subsequent meal. It delays emptying of the stomach, contributing to increased satiety
Like other soluble fibres, it reduces the absorption of protein and fat. It also feeds the friendly bacteria in the intestine, which turn it into short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, shown to protect against fat gain.
Feeding the friendly gut bacteria may also have other benefits, and some studies have shown a correlation between altered gut bacteria and body weight. Glucomannan is different from other soluble fibres due to it being even more viscous, which makes it particularly effective.
It is especially effective when combined with a weight reducing diet.🍅🍈🍊